Chris Hedges: America’s Disappeared

[marmar]

from truthdig:




America’s Disappeared

Posted on Jul 18, 2011
By Chris Hedges


Dr. Silvia Quintela was “disappeared” by the death squads in Argentina in 1977 when she was four months pregnant with her first child. She reportedly was kept alive at a military base until she gave birth to her son and then, like other victims of the military junta, most probably was drugged, stripped naked, chained to other unconscious victims and piled onto a cargo plane that was part of the “death flights” that disposed of the estimated 20,000 disappeared. The military planes with their inert human cargo would fly over the Atlantic at night and the chained bodies would be pushed out the door into the ocean. Quintela, who had worked as a doctor in the city’s slums, was 28 when she was murdered.

A military doctor, Maj. Norberto Atilio Bianco, who was extradited Friday from Paraguay to Argentina for baby trafficking, is alleged to have seized Quintela’s infant son along with dozens, perhaps hundreds, of other babies. The children were handed to military families for adoption. Bianco, who was the head of the clandestine maternity unit that functioned during the Dirty War in the military hospital of Campo de Mayo, was reported by eyewitnesses to have personally carried the babies out of the military hospital. He also kept one of the infants. Argentina on Thursday convicted retired Gen. Hector Gamen and former Col. Hugo Pascarelli of committing crimes against humanity at the “El Vesubio” prison, where 2,500 people were tortured in 1976-1978. They were sentenced to life in prison. Since revoking an amnesty law in 2005 designed to protect the military, Argentina has prosecuted 807 for crimes against humanity, although only 212 people have been sentenced. It has been, for those of us who lived in Argentina during the military dictatorship, a painfully slow march toward justice.

Most of the disappeared in Argentina were not armed radicals but labor leaders, community organizers, leftist intellectuals, student activists and those who happened to be in the wrong spot at the wrong time. Few had any connection with armed campaigns of resistance. Indeed, by the time of the 1976 Argentine coup, the armed guerrilla groups, such as the Montoneros, had largely been wiped out. These radical groups, like al-Qaida in its campaign against the United States, never posed an existential threat to the regime, but the national drive against terror in both Argentina and the United States became an excuse to subvert the legal system, instill fear and passivity in the populace, and form a vast underground prison system populated with torturers and interrogators, as well as government officials and lawyers who operated beyond the rule of law. Torture, prolonged detention without trial, sexual humiliation, rape, disappearance, extortion, looting, random murder and abuse have become, as in Argentina during the Dirty War, part of our own subterranean world of detention sites and torture centers.

We Americans have rewritten our laws, as the Argentines did, to make criminal behavior legal. John Rizzo, the former acting general counsel for the CIA, approved drone attacks that have killed hundreds of people, many of them civilians in Pakistan, although we are not at war with Pakistan. Rizzo has admitted that he signed off on so-called enhanced interrogation techniques. He told Newsweek that the CIA operated “a hit list.” He asked in the interview: “How many law professors have signed off on a death warrant?” Rizzo, in moral terms, is no different from the deported Argentine doctor Bianco, and this is why lawyers in Britain and Pakistan are calling for his extradition to Pakistan to face charges of murder. Let us hope they succeed. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/americas_disappeared_20110718/

[xchrom]

1. Recommend

[fasttense]

2. Becoming a 3rd world Banana Republic is not all fun and games.n/t

[bvar22]

7. But it IS "Fun & Games" for the Sociopaths, Psychopaths, and Top 1%.

Welcome to the New American Century.
SEE: PNAC

[truedelphi]

13. Anyone who is ambitious and lacks curiousity can

Reap huge rewards in the fields of science, the media, and of course, politics.

As long as a person follows the wishes of the Upper Elite, life can be totally groovy.

[Octafish]

3. Sounds familiar.

Most of the disappeared in Argentina were not armed radicals but labor leaders, community organizers, leftist intellectuals, student activists and those who happened to be in the wrong spot at the wrong time. Few had any connection with armed campaigns of resistance.

Now, who does the FBI spy on? Peace activists? Environmentalists? Pro-Justice types? Liberals?

[Fokker Trip]

11. Couldn't agree more.

Its always politically motivated and they always go after free thinkers, no matter what the cover story. Based on everything I know I believe that most right wingers, certainly the hard core right wingers represent extreme cases of Attachment Disorder, often displayed as PTSD like symptoms. They project their paranoia and fear and other harmful symptoms into the world. The more power and money that they have the more damage that they can do.

The inequality in the US and elsewhere makes this kind of behavior more likely as time goes on. The desire to acquire money and to never be able have enough is another expression of the Attachment Disorder, its an addiction like any other and the more they have the more they fear losing it. Other global dangers like climate change must be denied at all costs as the threat is simply not tolerable to people who have disordered attachments.

Attachment disorder is thought now to be very widespread and certainly isn't restricted to the right wing, but the right wing has the resources to allow acting out without having to deal with the pain within. I'm left leaning enough to be classed as an Anarcho-Syndicalist(lol...rated by political compass) and I have been working through attachment issues(with much success) for a while now.

[saras]

18. And don't even CONSIDER the relationship between pharmaceuticals and attachment disorder...

[Fokker Trip]

4. What happened was so horrific

And to me there is something particularly chilling about the way that these people were killed. The mechanistic nature of it and the use of sedatives to render them unable even to live out their last few moments. I've read that they were told that they were being mildly sedated for their own protection while they were transported to another facility.

The US drugs many or all of its rendition subjects in the same way and dresses them in diapers for transport. Who's to know if some were tipped out the back of a C 130 on its way to any one of the black sites.

Its likely that many/most of these death squads were trained at the School of the Americas in Georgia, USA. Its reasonable to imagine that these methods will return to the "Homeland"(TM) proper and be used on troublesome US citizens at some point in the future.

After all, Leftists have to be dealt with somehow, they just get in the way of progress...(sarc.)

[Lorien]

5. A Must Read; very sobering indeed. nt

[Uncle Joe]

6. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, marmar.

[Demeter]

8. The thing I don't Understand About This Is: Why Didn't People Have Their OWN Babies?

Massive sterility? Fear of pregnancy "deforming" the trophy wife? Was there such a population imbalance that people were desperate for children to the point of murder and kidnapping?

I find it hard to imagine people finding it their patriotic duty to take in forcibly-orphaned to raise as their heirs. They didn't send them to maquiladoras, either...

What was the personal motive? How many unhappily childless couples could there have been?

[Fokker Trip]

9. I believe that there were 2 motivations.

I don't think it had much to do with sterility. I use the phrase "I think" because I haven't tracked down relevant sources, but I do remeber reading about this quite a while back as it made no sense to me either. Why kill your enemy and then go to all the trouble of bringing the baby to birth?

I think that the first reason was the incredible and long term pleasure that a sadist would take in raising the child of his most hated enemy and that that child would be raised to believe the exact opposite of his or her parents, becoming a tool or administrator of the right wing state. The step father would always know that he was violating the memory of parents for as long as that child was under his care. This is part of what is so chilling to me about the whole thing. The pure hatred that the right had for leftists, the dehumanization that was present is disturbingly similar to the kind of hate you see in the US for anything "Liberal" or "Socialist".

I think that the other reason is more in line historically with invasions where the invading army used widespread rape as a way to spread their own genetic material throughout the conquered population. This was a form of ethnic cleansing or ethnic takeover. Returning soldiers of the defeated nation would be demoralized by never knowing what children might have been fathered by the enemy rapists. Rape was widespread during the Russian taking of Berlin and I tend to assume every army does it if given the chance, I think its a very primitive impulse that can be awakened in percentage of otherwise normal seeming men.

[truedelphi]

15. very good contribution to the topic.

But can I point out that one reason the Russian soldiers were raping and pillaging in the streets of Berlin, was that their families had suffered unimaginable horrors during the German advance into Russia?

American GI's didn't mistreat the German civilians that much, in part because their families had not really suffered atrocities during the war. Except for one causality due to a Japanese balloon descending on the hills of The Pacific NW, and of course civilians killed during the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor, American families were safe and sound during the war.

[Fokker Trip]

16. Thanks truedelphi. Totally agree about the Russians.

I agree that the suffering that the Russians endured was truly epic. 20+ million dead, the siege of Leningrad, etc. and the troops carried that knowledge with them. The PTSD that most all of the troops would surely have been experiencing would have made them rather savage as well.

I also agree about the American and British soldiers. It did happen, isolated incidents, but not in the systematic way that is described of the Russians.

With regard to the macro picture of the allies behavior in occupied Germany I have read enough to believe that a purposeful lack of action in assisting the defeated German population led to the deaths of many many German civilians after the war.

It could be argued that the Germans had caused such harm and carried out such atrocities that they deserved the ill treatment. But it was civilians paying much of the price in Germany and I think that reprisals against civilians by any armed forces is morally repugnant and unjustifiable, an eye for an eye doesn't work. Many/most of the German soldiers captured by the Russians died on marches or in camps.

Here is a quote from a book that deals with post WWII german deaths. the book is by James Bacque, Crimes and Mercies: The Fate of German Civilians Under Allied Occupation (Toronto: Little, Brown, 1997).

"given the extraordinarily harsh conditions imposed upon them by the Allies (i.e., the British, French, Soviets, and Americans), at least 9.3 million and possibly as many as 13.7 million Germans, had, by 1950, needlessly died as a result."

There is evidence that the British tortured captured German military personnel in Germany and Britain during the war. I tend to assume that the American OSS probably did as well.

The great propaganda machine deployed during and after WWII and the Cold War had always had as one of its chief goals the demonisation and dehumanization of the Axis powers and populations and post WWII, the Russians. I think this has led to a far too polarized view of who was a good guy and who was a bad guy.

I haven't found much to read about the genetic shift that must have occurred in Russia(in particular due to the massive loss of life) as an after effect of the war. Certainly they have a massive alcoholism and addiction problem. I suspect that a good percentage of the population even now suffers from PTSD as it can be passed on to the child through hormones in the mother (elevated cortisol in the newborn is the evidence). The US might be in the same boat as it has had so many soldiers fighting so many wars for so long.

Britain must have suffered a similar effect after WWI.

Its an interesting topic and I think that it has had an enormous effect on global politics.

[Demeter]

19. If So, That Was Not Only Evil, but Terminally Sick

and ultimately, a failure.

[Solly Mack]

10. K&R

[DeSwiss]

12. K&R

Excerpted from the article:

"Human Rights Watch, http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2011/07/12/getting-away-torture">in a new report, “Getting Away With Torture: The Bush Administration and Mistreatment of Detainees,” declared there is “overwhelming evidence of torture by the Bush administration.” President Barack Obama, the report went on, is obliged “to order a criminal investigation into allegations of detainee abuse authorized by former President George W. Bush and other senior officials.”

But Obama has no intention of restoring the rule of law. He not only refuses to prosecute flagrant war crimes, but has immunized those who orchestrated, led and carried out the torture. At the same time he has dramatically increased war crimes, including drone strikes in Pakistan. He continues to preside over hundreds of the offshore penal colonies, where abuse and torture remain common. He is complicit with the killers and the torturers." http://www.truthdig.com/report/page2/americas_disappeared_20110718/">~Chris Hedges

In the end it is the deeds, not the words, which count. And so while others may find a way to give Obama a pass because, as they say, "he is only one man, he is not a dictator, he isn't the whole Congress. He can only do so much." So what excuse will they give him for sanctioning this illegal behavior? How can he be exonerated for allowing these murderers and torturers to go free? How can he not be also held accountable for the deaths of innocents? Why won't the Harvard law professor uphold the law?

It is because we know that he is afraid of the people who did this.

It is because we know they would murder him just like they have done so before.

- And so, we know that we are living a lie. And lies cannot stand......

"Close down Guantanamo, restore habeas corpus, say no to renditions, no to wireless wiretaps..." - Barack Obama, November 14, 2007 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp">Guantanamo is still open, while http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_corpus_in_the_United_States#Suspension_in_the_21st_Century">habeas corpus has been restored by Executive Order, renditions and wireless wiretaps http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/06/16/obama-frodo-give-bush-powers/">continue. In addition, President Obama has given himself the power to assassinate http://ccrjustice.org/learn-more/faqs/kill-lists">a US citizen overseas in the name of national security. )

"I've said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantanamo and I will follow through on that. I've said repeatedly that America doesn't torture. And I'm going to make sure we don't torture. Those are part and parcel of an effort to regain America's moral stature in the world." - Barack Obama, 60 Minutes (2008) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp">Guantanamo is still open, the US is using foreign nations to carry out torture, when it isn't http://news.change.org/stories/un-investigating-bradley-manning-torture-claims">committing it itself.)

[truedelphi]

14. Proud to be Rec number forty. n/t

[JJW]

17. The Germans said they didn't know what....

the Nazis were doing. Now Americans are distracted by Dancing with the Stars and Loser.

[nashville_brook]

20. k and r

[Agony]

21. recommend nt

[chill_wind]

22. K & R. Especially the final paragraph. "The only way the rule of law will be restored,

if it is restored, is piece by piece, extradition by extradition, trial by trial. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, former CIA Director George Tenet, Condoleezza Rice and John Ashcroft will, if we return to the rule of law, face trial. The lawyers who made legal what under international and domestic law is illegal, including not only Rizzo but Alberto Gonzales, Jay Bybee, David Addington, William J. Haynes and John Yoo, will, if we are to dig our way out of this morass, be disbarred and prosecuted. Our senior military leaders, including Gen. David Petraeus, who oversaw death squads in Iraq and widespread torture in clandestine prisons, will be lined up in a courtroom, as were the generals in Argentina, and made to answer for these crimes. This is the only route back. If it happens it will happen because a few courageous souls such as the attorney and president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Michael Ratner, are trying to make it happen. It will take time—a lot of time; the crimes committed by Bianco and the two former officers sent to prison this month are nearly four decades old. If it does not happen, then we will continue to descend into a terrifying, dystopian police state where our guards will, on a whim, haul us out of our cells to an amusement park and make us ride, numb and bewildered, on the kiddie train, before the next round of torture."

[Jefferson23]

26. +1 K&R n/t

[lonestarnot]

23. K & Rec.

[OwnedByFerrets]

24. Sadly K and R'd

[pscot]

25. I read it as America (ha)s disappeared

The America I grew up in has indeed disappeared, and I don't like the monstrosity that has taken its place.